


Sixty-Two Hours

by autisticblueteam



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Autistic Character, Autistic Character(s), Gen, Hallucinations, Season/Series 15 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 13:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11532993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autisticblueteam/pseuds/autisticblueteam
Summary: Minutes pass slowly when you can’t stop looking at the clock.(Spoilers up to 15x16.)





	Sixty-Two Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Contains very mild spoilers for episode 16, and the usual warnings associated with the Hell Room™: discussions of death, dehydration, starvation, etc. Also hallucinations.

According to her HUD, it had been sixty-one hours, thirty two minutes, and fifty seconds since their armour locked.

Sixty-one hours, thirty three minutes, and two seconds since they were left down here to die.

And Wash had started to fall unconscious again.

“Come on Wash, stay with me.” She wished she could look at him. Wash was nothing more than a blurry smudge of grey on her periphery, barely visible against the grey of the walls of the room. Only the body of Agent Indiana, her armour’s white and red, provided enough contrast for her to make him out at all. “Stay with me, Wash.”

“I’m− I’m trying, Lina,” he said, his breathing heavy and laboured. Tired. “It’s just− I’m so tired.”

“You− You’ve stayed awake longer than this before, Wash. You’re not losing your touch, are you?” she teased, despite the way her voice threatened to break. Flicking her tongue across her lips to wet them brought the taste of iron; her lip had long since split from her stressed chewing, the blood drying over the cut and down her chin. Licking her lips did nothing, anyway. Dehydration had left her mouth bone dry.

There was a faint laugh. “We’re taking digs at the insomniac now, are we? If− If I remember right, you have me beat on that record anyway. Beaten at my own game.”

“You know me. Always gotta be the best.”

Wash laughed weakly again and Carolina felt the slightest tug of a smile at the corner of her lips, only for it to fade away when the noise became little more than a distressed groan. The silence that followed was agonising; every minute down here without the sound of one of their voices was just another reminder of how isolated they were, of the fate they’d been left to.

“Wash?”

“S-Still with you. Still with you. Sorry. Just− running out of things to say,” he said, followed by a heavy pause. “A-And out of time.”

Carolina’s teeth tugged at the cut on her lip. It stung, but at least it was a sensation. “We’re not running out of time, Wash. We’re going to get out of here.”

Sixty-one hours, forty one minutes, and five seconds.

“C-Carolina, the− we’ve been down here nearly− nearly three days. We’re running out of time.”

“The guys will _find_ us. Don’t you start giving up on me, Wash.” It was hard enough to keep believing they’d get out of here as it was. “The guys will find us, we will get out, and we will make. Temple. Pay. You hear me, Wash?”

He hesitated, sighed quietly. “…I hear you.”

Sixty-one hours, forty three minutes, and fifteen seconds.

Sixty-one hours, forty five minutes, and thirty seconds.

Sixty-one hours, forty six minutes, and ten seconds.

Everything ached.

Sensory deprivation had quickly become its own brand of sensory overload, where every little sensation she felt was amplified ten times over in the absence of anything else. Pain that would have been nothing more than a mild inconvenience in any other circumstances was borderline agony. She couldn’t stretch away cramp, or move to a new position to prevent worrying numbness. All she could do was bite her lip; breathe as deeply as the constriction across her chest would allow; and wait.

Sixty-one hours, forty nine minutes, and three seconds.

Why did she let checking the clock become a compulsion?

“C-Charlotte?”

Carolina jerked something in her neck in her instinctive attempt to turn her head, the use of her civilian name a sure sign of something wrong. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m hallucinating again. Indi− Indiana’s body. It looks like it’s moving, in the corner of my eye. Turning around.” He didn’t sound scared, he never did; this wasn’t his first time experiencing hallucinations since they’d come down here, or even in the time before. “B-Bit morbid. Can you−?”

“She’s not moving,” she said, quickly. The white and red figure beyond Wash was as still as it had been for the past sixty-one hours, fifty five minutes and fifty three seconds. Indiana wasn’t moving. “I promise.”

“Okay. Good. Because that would be− be extremely worrying.” There was a weak laugh on his breath, relieved despite the note of fear that remained in his voice. The checks helped, but they didn’t make the hallucination disappear just like that. “I’m sorry, about this.”

“Don’t be. You don’t have to be sorry.”

Sixty-one hours, fifty seven minutes and thirty seconds.

She knew time passed slower when you kept looking at it, but there was nothing else to look at. Her HUD was as locked down as the rest of her armour, only displaying her own vitals and the time. Ahead of her, there were only the doors and the body of Agent Montana; she didn’t really want to linger on that.

Thinking too hard about their surroundings made her feel sick to her stomach.

So she kept checking the clock, and checking on Wash.

He’d gone quiet again, breathing slow and rough.

She swallowed. “Still with me, Wash?”

“Still− Still with you, Lina.”

The hour rolled over.

Sixty-two hours.


End file.
